


An Unexpected Meeting

by missmarianne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Death Eaters, F/M, First Meetings, Grooming, Horcruxes, Legilimency, Manipulation, POV Bellatrix Black Lestrange, POV Tom Riddle, Present Tense, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Recruitment, Teenage Bellatrix, dual perspective, not smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 00:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22007314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmarianne/pseuds/missmarianne
Summary: The night he applies for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, Lord Voldemort plans to plant his diadem in Hogwarts. He doesn't plan to meet a student in the halls. But when it comes to Bellatrix Black, nothing ever goes quite according to plan.
Relationships: Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Voldemort
Comments: 10
Kudos: 19





	An Unexpected Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing sexual, but explicit grooming and manipulation. Voldemort is (obviously) not a good guy.

_**January, 1966.** _

When the door shuts behind him, Lord Voldemort finds he is angry enough to kill. For some, this sentiment might be a trite (and rather tired) cliché: a sweet, overzealous exaggeration. For Lord Voldemort, it is not. The desire to kill is practically an emotion all its own these days, more articulate than the epithet of rage.

He is becoming—nay, has become—well acquainted with the pleasures of ending life.

Though (Voldemort is forced to acknowledge) it would hardly be prudent at this moment. Killing for catharsis is an indulgence to be avoided in all but the most secure of circumstances. He has developed the magnanimous self-possession to adhere.

He exhales, his fingers relaxing on the yew wand in his pocket.

Dumbledore no doubt congratulates himself behind the closed office door. The notion is insufferable. Lord Voldemort will not suffer in the directionless anger like the schoolboy he once was. His anger must have a goal.

He sweeps away from the stone steps to the pompous fool’s chamber. He schemes ways to get back at the old man—maybe Voldemort will curse the Defense Against the Dark Arts position entirely before he departs: a spiteful reminder of his unfair treatment.

While he descends into the stone-clad halls, Lord Voldemort reminds himself that this visit has always had a duality of purpose. One stated and one subversive. The fact that he has been met with officious rejection matters but little in the breadth of the scheme.

And yet.

His memory serves him well as he navigates the silent corridors. It served him well in picking the time of this meeting, too. Past the hour of enforced curfew, all save prowling, over-assured prefects are confined to their rooms. Out of his way. He himself, 30 years prior, would have been strolling the under these arches and smirking at the shadows like old friends. He doubts the currently appointed prefects put their time past curfew to such good use.

He hears a rustle and changes his course.

Behind the statue of the goblin, Aster the Notorious, he finds the old pointed arch. The secret passage winds through a broom closet—it was Transfiguration storage in his day—and releases him on the fifth floor.

Here, the silence feels more secure. These halls are pure, no sign of even a swaggering, badge-wearing child, puffed with the brazen certainty of youth. (The young, he thinks, always underestimate their own mortality, making them infinitely easier and more gratifying to kill. He supposes he felt similarly in his youth—though of course, for him, it was not an underestimation.)

Lord Voldemort prefers it this way; the solitude, the silence. As useless as he knows sentiment to be, Voldemort has always harbored fondness for this castle. The fondness does not merit analysis. It does color the torch-lit corridors with a nostalgic glow. The glow is not enough to dissipate the grip of hot, fulvous rage, which persists.

The spindled, prodding shape in the inner crevice of his robes does set him at ease, however. His true purpose here. His treasure.

It thrums with an almost kinetic tug, proof of its precious contents. A smirk lifts Voldemort’s lips when he remembers the old fool’s words, spoken not five minutes ago: “You came, you asked, you must have had a purpose.”

Indeed, thinks Voldemort, striding coolly up the curving stair. He has a purpose. He always has a purpose. His life is a series of purposeful gestures, of strokes leading to mastery. This current endeavor is one of his bolder. It is not an ill-calculated risk. It is slightly motivated by vindication (he won’t pretend otherwise) but the derisive glee from misleading the old man assures him.

The old, infuriating man. Even the memory of the crooked nose and absurd spectacles is enough to tense Voldemort’s jaw. Few things, Voldemort has come to believe, are more irksome than those who obstinately resist integration into his plans. So easily, they could all fit like cogs: machinery waiting to be ground in the perfect schema of his vision. Often, he knows people so well that their acquiescence is inevitable. He has made it his task to know people, to understand their monotonous inner workings and pedestrian desires. The novelty of grooming them almost wears after infinite repetitions. Almost.

Voldemort has realized that people are unfailingly dull and predictable. Even those who cling to ridiculous notions of their own superiority, like the infuriating headmaster, are as transparent as malleable water. People are bags of flesh and blood, strung by sinew, waiting to be puppeted.

Alone, now, and in a mood to be candid with himself, Voldemort knows that his irritation at the headmaster derives from an additional source, beyond the old man’s obvious rejection and half-hidden power plays. However, this reason is pettier. It indicates a weakness. Perhaps it is confronting the trace of this weakness—any weakness—that spurs the irritation.

It was the manner in which the old man had addressed him. It was the _name._

 _Tom_.

Even the din of the single syllable in his head is loathsome. It conjures the time before—the time that does not bear dwelling on, of spotless checkered tiles and harried matrons and clinical, sterile obedience. It conjures a myriad of wan, affection-starved faces, the wretched sound, incessant, pervasive, of infant wailing—

No. He would prefer not to reminisce. Safe to say the name itself is antithetical to him and evocative of everything he opposes—mundane, weakness, muggle. Mortality. It was never his name to begin with. Voldemort has not been Tom, even to his own mind, since he first discovered the joy of killing and watched the true Tom fall before his wand.

Dumbledore, surely, has guessed at Voldemort’s hatred of _Tom_ , if not his reasons for it. He attempts to restrict Lord Voldemort by trapping him with small, paltry names. More the fool. Lord Voldemort resists ensnarement.

But now, Voldemort will trap the headmaster. He will store his treasure within the supposed haven of Hogwarts; a piece of darkness, nesting. The notion spurs a flicker in his blood.

Lord Voldemort has let himself become absorbed in his own thoughts, not heeding his progress through the hall. His destination lies ahead.

For his school-age sedition, he was rewarded with the private knowledge of several useful secrets. The castle walls brim with shadowy mysteries, waiting to be uncovered by clever, nimble hands, waiting to reveal themselves to worthy candidates. Secrets far beyond a convenient passageway here and there. The secret he now employs to hide the diadem proves one of the most fruitful.

The empty breadth of wall beckons. He is about to initiate the ritual, coaxing the castle through the power of his will to divulge its secrets...to reveal its room of treasures...

Then, Lord Voldemort stops.

* * *

The party is disappointing, and Bellatrix is so unsurprised by this that she almost fails to be disappointed.

It is yet another opportunity for Slughorn to press, with grubby hands, with insatiable appetite, for approval. Small wonder she resisted attending one of his little "Slugclub" soirees for so long.

 _What does he want?_ Bellatrix muses as she watches the portly creature wringing her cousin's hand. Evan Rosier shoots her a conciliatory smile over his shoulder, behind Slughorn’s back; Bellatrix rolls her eyes by way of reply. Is it galleons the potions master desires? Connections? A mere word from one of the young pure-blood elite he presides over, as head of house, seems to titillate him an embarrassing degree.

She turns from him.

The music is over-loud and the air is sweltering. Mingling students flap hands to fan themselves and smear the sweat from pink foreheads into frizzing hair. It smells of bodies.

Bellatrix stifles a yawn. Dodging a teetering girl named Rita that she has learned to hate on sight, Bellatrix considers leaving. A raucous after-party has likely developed in the common room; it could prove more entertaining. Surely it would at least have less posturing, free from Slughorn’s supervision. The student-initiated party might have more bumbling drunks, noxious from their first illicit sip of firewhisky. The prospect is simultaneously wearing and amusing.

She is ready to be free of this party, at least. Her list of party practices is completed. In a corner designed to bear the appearance of concealment, but selected for its transparency, she has already snogged Yorath Yaxley. The action garnered her some envious glares—Bellatrix's fellow fourth-years are endlessly impressed by her taste for older boys and her skill at ensnaring whichever 6th or 7th year she chooses. As the leading goal-scorer for the Slytherin team three years running, and this year’s captain, Yaxley is one of the more coveted.

But with the mercenary kissing and exhibiting done, there’s little else to recommend this event.

Bellatrix threads her way through cheaply-materialled dress robes. Her elbow makes contact with a plait of brown hair, which whips as its owner turns—and her sister Andromeda is grinning at her.

“Leaving?” she asks.

“Staying?” Bellatrix parries.

Andromeda glances around. “I’m having fun.” When Bellatrix doesn’t reply, Andromeda’s eyebrow quirks upward. “I take it that you’re not.”

Bellatrix can’t help but laugh. “I was,” she admits. “But I am bored.”

“Everything bores you, Bella.”

“You are not wrong.”

Andromeda shoots a meaningful glance across Slughorn’s teeming office. “Cissy seems to be avoiding boredom quite nicely.”

Bellatrix doesn’t even have to look to know what she will see; but ever the glutton for punishment, she looks anyway. She is treated to the sight of her youngest sister battering her eyes at Lucius Malfoy. “I wish she would get a grip on herself.”

“Come on,” says Andromeda with a bracing shrug. “She is only twelve. She will learn. Do not act as though flirting is a criminal offense.”

“It is not that she is flirting. _I_ flirt. It’s the way she _hangs_ on him,” Bellatrix says, and the words fill her mouth with the taste something acrid.

Andromeda smirks. “You can’t hold everyone to your standard. The day you hang on someone, Bella, hell will freeze over.”

Bellatrix knows this; it is a point of pride. “The same is true for you,” she reminds her sister. The Black pride runs through both their veins; and in spite of the influence of their parents and aunt, neither are the hanging type. Duty-bound, but neither willing to surrender power.

Andromeda tosses back the end of her butter-beer. “I might try to get drunk,” she muses into the dregs of her bottle. “I’ve never been drunk before.”

“It will take more than a single butterbeer, I expect,” replies Bellatrix dryly.

“You’re sure you’re leaving?” Andromeda eyes dance over flushed cheeks. “You could keep me company.”

Bellatrix can think of a thousand things she would rather do than cart her younger sister through the sloppy thralls of virginal inebriation. Most things, in fact. She has never cared to play the mother.

“Enjoy yourself, then,” she tells Andromeda, but her sister is intercepted by her friend Alice, and already too engrossed to reply by the time Bellatrix begins to depart.

She leaves. The door shuts; the cool stone hallway welcomes her. One of Slughorn’s booming laughs is muffled behind the door. She can breathe out here, which is a pleasant change. She can cool her sweat-prickled underarms and back.

What she really needs, she thinks, is a _bath_. Water will sluice the proximity to grasping people from her skin. Not the common room baths, though—she would prefer something luxurious and private. It is time, then, to sneak into the prefect bathroom, a feat she has managed several times before. It was actually Yaxley who tipped her off to the entrance, and now it’s become absurdly easy, so easy it almost isn’t fun. Almost.

She starts winding her way from Slughorn’s office. Bellatrix likes to skulk through the halls after curfew. Sometimes, she encounters blustering prefects, and then it is always amusing to see whether or not they will have the courage to reprimand a pure-blood princess like her—a Black, nonetheless—for rule breaking. So long as she avoids Theodore Tonks, the hateful Gryffindor prefect, she should remain unmolested.

To get to the bathroom of her choosing, she has to pass through the seventh-floor corridor. It is out of her way, but it gives her more time to meander.

Sometimes, when she walks alone like this, she allows herself to indulge in foolhardy fantasies.

She dreams of breaking things. Uncensored like this, visions twist through her mind of pushing _things_ beyond repair. She doesn’t care to analyze anything overmuch, least of all herself, but the image of uprooting structure is euphoric.

Bellatrix used to have a recurring desire. She would awaken and somehow, the rules of the world would have shifted, and she could do whatever she pleased with no consequences, to find that the next day everything would have mended and everyone would have been left with no memory of her actions.

The carnage she would cause. The things she would do.

Bellatrix’s foot hovers.

She has mounted the stair to the seventh floor, and notices a change in the familiar landscape. Not a change—an interloper.

A prefect—should she run? Pick a fight?

No, the shadow is too tall, a torch reveals a sliver of white face, almost indistinguishable but too chiseled for a child—a professor? Should she plead innocence? Intimidation?

Before Bellatrix can arrange her demeanor into curtseying apology or haughty superiority, she realizes the truth.

It is a stranger. It is no one she has seen before.

The torches are burning low. The hallway is dark. Her skin erupts into gooseflesh beneath the material of her robes. She has entered some other castle, she feels, the shadowy stranger rendering everything else strange and potent.

And, before she can second-guess, she steps forward into the shadow.

* * *

Lord Voldemort perceives her before he sees her. She is chaotic slip tunneling into the periphery of his mind. Her thoughts scent the air, as the cries of a mangled animal might alert a hawk. He senses her as a predator senses its prey.

He has not had quite enough warning. Never mind--he will disillusion himself, he thinks, the child will not notice; they rarely do.

Before the flick of his wand, one of the student’s thoughts dances outward. Youth often sounds this way: keening to themselves with paltry desires, unregulated in intensity. But the thought—it is different.

He sees what she has imagined. Vaporous and ever-shifting, he reads her desires to burn the castle, she visualizes herself as a harbinger of destruction, she cavorts through whim to impulse to carnage. These thoughts amuse him—who is this little Napoleon, covetous of sadism? At that age, he has likely done all which she dreams. But Lord Voldemort is shut out: he cannot quite grasp the thrum of truth behind her visions, as he so often does in others.

The entire encounter has lasted barely a second, so Lord Voldemort probes. He reaches out his own mind to sense her, circling at a distance.

The texture of her mind is puzzling. The thoughts which he can read, slippery, brittle, potent, are framed unusually, as if made of different material. Lord Voldemort has been peering into minds for years. They have their different makeups, markings, there are changes...but hers is unusual still.

To say that he was intrigued would be a gross exaggeration. She is still mortal, thus predictable. But Lord Voldemort never wastes that which might be useful to him—this is the foundation of his prodigious control.

And, a second later, she is close enough to perceive with mundane means. He recognizes her instantly. The sweep of hair and height and glare (what _disdain_ she peers at the world with) are identification enough, but her name is threaded through each corner of her mind. It upbraids each fragment of thought: she has married her name to her identity.

Lord Voldemort makes a decision. And he pockets his wand.

And he laces a smirk across his face to receive Bellatrix Black, eldest daughter in one of the oldest and purest magical families.

* * *

It is a man, and he is smiling.

Bellatrix approaches the way she might, were she a child—picking her way across the yard, trying to sneak up on a playfellow during hide and seek. She feels, though she cannot say why, that any sudden noise will rouse the stranger, like wild animal that will spit and foam at the mouth.

Then, she thinks that this is stupidity and thrusts her head up.

“Who are you?”

The man does not reply. Moonlight careens in from the windows. It flirts with his face and his form, and somehow Bellatrix sees it for the first time, sees Him.

He is a marble bust, she thinks, not a man.

She is a tall girl, one of the tallest fourth years. He is taller. He is lean, lithe. She cannot take her eyes off his sculpted neck, the shaft of Adam's apple. Not even a shadow of stubble is visible on his translucently pale skin.

It is safer to study his neck, for his face is hard to look at—there is something disconcerting about it; she thinks of wild animals once more. No. It is like the unnamed creature that flits through nightmares, shadowy and impossible to pin down, but, in its inhuman coldness, handsome; staring into his face is like staring straight into the sun.

His eyes burn.

“Tell me who you are.”

The stranger hears her unspoken “or else,” and his grin changes. It twists from a mask to a queer smirk, a betrayal of genuine amusement. His eyes, still, are dark as ice.

Perhaps, Bellatrix's subconscious recognizes a monster, and some primordial instinct tells her to run. Perhaps, that is why she stays.

He doesn’t reply. Something teases behind Bellatrix’s eyes, like a buzzing in her skull. Maybe it is the ghost of her own paranoia. With a blink of her eyes, she quiets the noise. There is the resultant numbness, which she often feels before she duels, like a twinge of adrenaline paring away unnecessary emotion.

She is glad of the focus, for now the stranger decides to speak.

“You might have heard of me,” he says.

Bellatrix pauses. She never can turn down a mystery. She never can resist. A man who looks like one of the pure and Dark sorcerers from a book she might have read as a little girl, lounging in a 7th floor corridor...she thinks of ministry officials, of diplomats, of austere substitutes, of terrorists—

“I know you,” the man offers.

His nonchalance is as enticing as it is provoking.

Bellatrix cannot deny her enjoyment of her budding reputation...she inherited the mantle of her family, but she cannot be contented with merely living up to it. She must surpass it. She must be notable in her own right—the most, the best, unsurpassed.

She likes that this creature knows of her. She despises his arrogance.

“You are Bellatrix Black.”

She cannot help the scorn which tinges her reply. “So you’ve _read_ of me.” Her name is to be found, of course, in Pure Blood directories, in papers, in the circulating whispers of the pure community.

The stranger shifts in the moonlight. Even his motions are odd: all economy of movement, like some subtle, sibilant dancer. His gaze flays her, she thinks, but she does not want to look away.

“No, _my dear_ ,” he says. It is the hush of those two words, intimate and violating, which scare her.

Bellatrix has been frustrated, uncomfortable (when confronted with her limits, when confronted with those inferior,) she has been _anxious_ through the years. But she has not been _afraid_. She has not, in waking memory, been so decisively...outmatched. It makes her feel small. It makes her feel old, too, and _great_ , to be in proximity to something so dark, like she alone can hold her footing on the lip of a crumbling cliff.

She rather likes it.

“I am acquainted with your father,” he says.

The world collapses and redoubles. Bellatrix inhales.

She understands, at these words, recognizes Him—she berates herself for her slowness. She should have identified him sooner.

And then, the Dark Lord says, “But I have had my eye on _you_ ,” with an intensity that would make her scurry away were that in her nature. But it is not.

So with his words, Bellatrix is undone.

Or rebuilt.

Or both.

* * *

Lord Voldemort trusted her to approach, and he judged correctly. With a queer foreboding, the girl marches toward him, then stands, unspeaking.

Up close, she looks young. She does not see herself as young, he assesses. She is the elder in her family, an heir but for the birth of a young cousin—that he knows from Cygnus.

Yet, he sees. Much can be learned from physical observation, even irrelevant trifles, and Lord Voldemort is astute as always.

A spray of fading freckles patterns her gently rounded checks, not yet sharpened into maturity. Her form is slightly wiry, not matched to her height, as though she has recently grown. Like the other Blacks he knows, her eyes are grey. They glare from hooded lids with perpetual disapproval. Their jaded expression amuses Voldemort. He can see how insular her upbringing has been, how no amount of snooping or thirst for knowledge has dissipated her fundamental impressionism.

How old _is_ she? This will change his approach; He judges her 16. She is known to him, he must admit, not only through her father’s thoughts, but the thoughts of others. Though most are several years her senior, some of Cygnus’s fellow Death Eaters put the eldest Black girl to interesting uses in their minds, though they have exaggerated her development.

Her mind reveals her a full year younger than his guess: a fourth year. Lord Voldemort thinks past this with some distaste. Her precociousness, though, may counteract her youth.

Lord Voldemort can guess, from the way she has appeared in others’ minds and his own judge of such things, that she is regarded as pretty. No—mayhap not pretty, a word which suggests something harmless and trivial. She is regarded as attractive to those about her; and her peers are frightened of her. She is intelligent, by all counts. Her own thoughts attest thus.

Underneath his analysis, her mind still seethes and pulses. It is intractable. It is tantalizing, perhaps, to break it.

Tonight, after his request, Lord Voldemort foresaw himself making a mockery of Dumbledore’s supposed sanctuary by hiding the diadem. But he did not even anticipate violating the headmaster in this way—by corrupting one of his students under his crooked nose. The prospect is too delicious to go untasted.

Without letting the young Black see, Voldemort casts a clever charm to conceal them and mute their voices. They are enshelled in reckless privacy.

He ponders speaking first, just a harmless bait, of course. It is necessary that she feels she is emboldened; that she feels she is risking something.

Yet, before he even needs to ply her, she bites. Perfect.

“Who are you?”

Her voice is low, challenging. Lord Voldemort weighs his options. The Black girl likes a bit of a game, he sees. He will not reply forthrightly, then.

Lord Voldemort smooths his expression into one well-tested. He sees the effect on her face; she feels entranced, she feels there is _magic_ in the mysterious encounter. Just as intended. Bellatrix seems receptive to the charm Lord Voldemort has not called upon for some time.

(Lord Voldemort has registered that, with each Horcrux, his visage changes. At first, perhaps, it unnerved him. But as he foregoes human weaknesses, his vanity has faded. These physical markers of his ascension, now, are reminders that he is above the fancy of his lessors. His new face is, additionally, helpful in creating fear and reverence. Let his altered form be a testament that he no longer needs to grovel, kissing the hands of old women, and be pleasing to manipulate...other tactics now suit better.)

In fact, he perhaps didn’t mean to strike this particular note. He wanted Black to feel privy to something secret, but did not expect--

He scans her thoughts and almost laughs, pleased with himself, at the result: she is _fancying_ him. Black flatters him handsome, as a silly girl might pine for a becoming professor.

“Tell me who you are,” she demands.

From a devotee, the insolence would be unacceptable. But there may be plenty of time to humble Black. Her boldness, out of context, is refreshing.

Lord Voldemort regards her. She is shrouded in the silvery light which pours in from the window. He sees his own reflection in her grey eyes. Looking at them, he tries again to penetrate her mind.

Tunneling through the ticking, the inane, he _sees_ her. Lord Voldemort glances around in her mindscape—it is magnified, a fun-house, velvet-draped, and painfully sharp. He now understands: her mind is a puzzle because of its volatility, a shimmering, shapeshifting net of raw emotion and need. Ah, the Blacks. Magic is deeply entrenched in her; it rounds her very perception. He sees the instability; no wonder he could not freely extract the truth from her. Truth is pliable for Bellatrix. Perhaps something deeper, an imbalance...he skirts beneath her hunger and the wail of internal dialogue...yes.

She cycles through lethargy and activity, sometimes drowning in what she feels is hopelessness and then redoubling with unmitigated vigor, invincibility, reckless pursuit of notoriety. Nothing is moderate. Nothing is measured. She hates herself as she prizes herself. All is white, and all is black as her name.

Behind the typical desires--the approval of her betters, admiration of peers, attention from someone worthwhile... What Bellatrix wants, Lord Voldemort sees, is a cause. She wants order in her world, a code on which to hang her vacillating sense of self, so she might not suspend and sink in the chaos of her own making.

She wants a _god._

Lord Voldemort chuckles internally. He may even _enjoy_ himself tonight. He has not had a good seduction in some time. He does not mean seduction in the physical sense—he means in the metaphysical sense, he supposes, more rewarding than some sexual conquest. To tease out one’s desires and manifest some, withhold others, to bend a person like he might a spine.

But then—Bellatrix blinks. Eye-contact is broken. As seamlessly as a soap bubble, her mind sews together without him, leaving him on the periphery. He doubts she has mastered Occlumency and finds the mental dexterity interesting. _Tantalizing_.

Lord Voldemort could still permeate her walls, of course. He could either coax her into opening once more, or pressure until the walls break—but it would be folly to break her mind so soon.

Regardless, he has all he needs, even without her mental accompaniment, so he allows a retreat.

The rest of the script writes itself.

“You might have heard of me.”

She looks back at him with ill-disguised suspicion. Her brain whirs.

He pads her ego slightly: “You are Bellatrix Black.”

She interprets his remark as pandering, though it succeeds in aiding her curiosity, and increasing his ethos.

“So you’ve _read_ of me,” condescends the girl. She tosses her hair when she answers; Lord Voldemort idly wonders if this is what she does to make other children interested in her. Not just children, he amends, recalling the way Cygnus’s daughter has cropped up in the minds of his followers.

As he finds such things repulsive to his sense of ascetic control, he had not thought to pursue Bellatrix’s own views on romance (and associated affairs) before being barred from her mind.

Her tastes may be useful now. Lord Voldemort is almost curious. Even with his altered, uncommon appearance, does he possess the power to spark attraction, as well as fear? To charm is an implement—he should practice it, for his own gratification if nothing else, to keep it from growing dull.

He makes a calculated guess.

“No, _my dear_ ,” says Lord Voldemort with a smile. The words feel strange on his tongue; sensual mentor is not a role he has before played. He looks down at the girl, small, beneath him.

She shivers. Bellatrix stands there in the moonlight, in her thin dress robes.

For a moment, he doubts—has he overstepped? And then her lips purse; her chest rises; the grey eyes glint with fervor. The disdain is gone from them. She is all wide-eyed wonder.

How trite.

“I am acquainted with your father.” He catalogs the recognition flitting over her face. “But I have had my eye on you.”

Lord Voldemort begins the sentence on flattery but realizes, once spoken, that it is not entirely a lie.

Hasn’t he thought she would make promising new recruit, once of age? Charted her, occasionally, through the eyes of others?

His Death Eaters are unfortunately devoid of witches; the ingrained pure blood doctrine of domesticity is an unfortunate deterrent. Few pure witches can be persuaded to abandon the home long enough to join a cult. For the image of his future regime, it would be well were all his followers not bloodthirsty men.

Yet: Lord Voldemort acknowledges that the potential assets of Bellatrix—her slithering mind, her wide grey eyes, her _thirst_ —transcend far beyond.

* * *

Bellatrix has heard of Lord Voldemort. Everyone in her circle has.

However, she alone unearthed her father's secret allegiance; Bellatrix’s own mother does not know.

She had tracked her fathers’ fortnightly disappearances, overheard his stuttered excuses for leaving the house so late, and occasionally spied on his return. In some need for grandeur, Bellatrix had dreamed her father might be having an affair. In fact, she rather liked the intrigue of the idea—one could understand why the brooding and volatile Cygnus Black would tire of the wan Druella Rosier. But why, then, did he come back from these liaisons looking so frightened?

It was the mask that signaled some truth. Sneaking into his immaculate study after her father had retired, she spotted the new paperweight. Reversing the hasty transfiguration placed upon it was challenging but manageable. In its place, a curving black mask grinned up at her. Hallow eyelids peered out like something haunted.

And that was when Bellatrix connected this token to the whispers of a purist, vigilante group, and a wizard called Lord. The whispers told of revolutionary anti-muggle action conducted only at night by men in masks. From that point, she has listened and peeped and amassed a private store of knowledge and fantasy.

Now, she stands in the hall, sharing breath with the leader of a movement. His ideals and hers are twain. Hasn’t Bellatrix always striven to uphold the purity of her lineage?

She had pictured him old and craggy, battle worn. She did not picture this black-haired, raven-eyed demigod.

Moreover, she expected, from such a source, dismissal. Of course she has cherished silent dreams that one day she will tell her father, “I know,” and…he would lead her to one of their meetings, ritual and blazing Dark magic, and she would—but then, such visions crumple in on themselves like custard, for she cannot fathom old wizards permitting her entrance.

Yet. She heard the Dark Lord correctly. He wants her. His eye, he said—that black, glinting eye, like midwinter night—has been upon _her_.

Bellatrix recalls suddenly that he sees her at this moment. She is before him and he is before her.

What can she say? If she should misspeak, will he suddenly laugh, remembering (as elders like to remind) that she is a child or a witch or whatever else they use to stymie her?

Bellatrix is not a coward. She will tell him what she wants.

“I am ready,” she says.

The Dark Lord is inscrutable. His smirk is tamed, the leering grin fled, so only a straight mouth and inflexible brows chart her progress.

Before she can doubt, Bellatrix rushes on. “I know of you, you are correct. Sir. I support everything you stand for. I know my father thinks most highly—”

The parlance of pure blood manners does not serve her. She sounds as though she is recommending Lord Voldemort at an afternoon tea party. “Sir” does not suit him. It sounds common.

Bellatrix gnashes her teeth and starts again. “My Lord.” Reverence or performativity drag her eyes down: she stares at her boots below the hem of her robes. “My Lord.”

It is queer how apt the words sound, as though coaxed out of her. His demeanor selected them for her. It feels bold on her lips, on her tongue.

“I have learned of your movements,” she whispers. “Not through any indiscretion of my father.”

“Through your own cleverness,” he muses.

She nods. “And I know I am young, but I am ready. I am better at magic than anyone else in this school. I have read of the old ways…"

And what else? Bellatrix longs for the power she might reach through him. She feels she can give rise to a new breed of magic. She might grow fearsome, beyond their wildest dreams, in the full embrace of the Dark. In her, there is a strength no one has understood. Until now. 

“I want to _know_.”

Bellatrix meets the Dark Lord's eyes once more. He looks truly spectral. She is taken aback by the unearthly structure of his bones and the whiteness of his face.

Beyond the window, snow glints in the ghostly light. The night sky is tenuous blue. Her Lord, before her, is as pale as the snow.

* * *

Stirred by the girl’s unexpected willingness, Lord Voldemort is plotting.

A recalculation was not an outcome he anticipated from this night. Yet it is never unwelcome. He thought he would enjoy a conquest: but he has found a genuine prospect.

Lord Voldemort needs this girl, he realizes. The reasons are threefold.

Foremost, his currents devotees are strung by fear. The girl fears him, he is certain, but beneath that—

There is warmth: a pounding, ruby favor which she grants him. Bellatrix might have cut out her own heart. Who, before, has approaching him with so little reluctance? True, it is dangerous to welcome an unknown quantity. He surveys her plaintive, stiff posture: he need not fear, she will not betray him. Why not encourage her devotion enough to cement it?

The second reason: she is advantageous in terms of position and physical skill. Bellatrix Black is notable for her connection to the one of the most elite and well-connected families which he hopes to integrate. She is the second generation; he likes the prerequisite she will help to set, that entire families far into the future will be pledged to him. (He needs this, as he will live forever.) And, as she herself said, she is magically promising. Lord Voldemort has fancied a protegee, but he has been disappointed with the caliber of his general recruit. He was looking too old, he realizes. She is so delightfully _pliable._ He can sculpt her. She will sharpen into a great weapon, he is sure.

And it is more than that, he lets himself admit. The third reason is subtle, but no less tempting. The girl—Bellatrix—is at once forthcoming and elusive. He knows the pulse of her mind, she practically offers it to him, yet he does not possess it. He can anticipate her behavior and still—due to her fundamental erraticism—she is less tiresome than others. He expects he will continue claiming her, and she will find new ways of simultaneously accepting and evading. One day, he might claim that entire strange mind. At that point, he expects he will at last be bored of her.

But she has eons to go before then. Bellatrix is a long project.

So, decision being made, Lord Voldemort steps closer to her. She does not shy away. She does not recoil. Interesting. Interesting, and not displeasing.

Bella considers him and unfolds her own mind like an invitation.

He asks: “Would you like me to teach you?”

* * *

“Would you like me to teach you?” he breathes. “I know the spells which you speak. I know the old, Dark arts.”

Bellatrix remembers she is in the hallway. She has walked down the hallway before, careless, infantile, toting textbooks. Has she been a fool to speak so loudly?

Somehow, she does not care. If anyone sees, she believes her Dark Lord will protect them both. Noticing, again, the dusty torches and wide window, Bellatrix cannot believe that she undertakes this pact at Hogwarts. To think that less than an hour before, she was trapped at a party.

The party. For a moment, she remembers Andromeda, perhaps staggering back to the common room, nursing a sour stomach from drink. She remembers Cissy, curled in her dormitory bed with innocent fantasies of being escorted to future parties by Lucius Malfoy.

Is this what it all comes down to? The underside of pure society: is it people like Lord Voldemort, chipping away at the Mudbloods—is this the cost of magic? Or is she less noble, only covetous to join him for her own achievement?

Bellatrix wants it.

She wants to be so bold, and dangerous, and free. She wants to throw caution to the winds. She resents her sisters for even crowding her mind.

“They will all be so proud of you,” murmurs her Lord. “You will be more powerful than anyone can ever dream.”

Bellatrix is aware of their proximity. The heat of her body seems to permeate out and she feels it reverberating off his aura of ice. It feels unsafe. The lack of safety is part of the thrall.

And his words—escaping his lips with a timbre both deep and soft and luscious, as sibilant as the susurrus of snakes. She is almost ashamed how gratified that sentence makes her feel--they will be proud of her.

Her Lord’s hands spread as if in invitation.

 _He wants **me**_ , she thinks.

Bellatrix does not know why she does it. Many decisions of hers are rashly made.

And now, all is heady intoxication and desire and moon and darkness, like some furtive, enraptured fantasy.

She supposes she wants to show him her commitment.

He is as cold to the touch as she dreams.

* * *

Lord Voldemort knows when a soul has been signed over to him.

He looks for the submission in their eyes. Then, satisfied, he tucks the prize away. They will sit as a dusty trophy on a shelf, where he may tire of it or it may serve him, or both.

Bellatrix teeters. She teeters, her thoughts moaning and flying with such speed he does not bother to decipher them.

Then, she throws herself to the floor. Her black hair curtains her face. Her back slopes.

Subtlety, Voldemort notes, is not Black’s strength. As much of her behavior has, the groveling amuses him—and gratifies him—

Her next action is a surprise.

Her intention is barely telegraphed beforehand. With little warning, her wand arm shoots out, and he feels the grip of her fingers around his own hand.

Her mouth follows. It is soft and warm against his skin. (What was he expecting? He wasn’t expecting it; that is the answer.)

Proud, disdainful Bellatrix Black has laid a kiss on his hand.

Disgust is his first reaction. Lord Voldemort does not permit his followers to touch him. Next, irony—what would she think would she know her purity has been sullied by a Half-blood? Then curiosity.

He wonders if she intends it as a gesture of pledging, as if she were some knight swearing fealty. It strikes him as childlike—a child gripping out for a parent. Or maybe, those are Voldemort’s only associations with contact, skin banging against skin, because he has not willingly permitted such things since his own childhood days.

No. He will not think of that.

Bellatrix intends none of these. Like some carnal instinct, she only wanted to feel him.

When she looks up at him, her hand still locked around his own, her eyes brim with devotion, desire, and hunger.

He does not see submission.

She is like some unbroken colt, enticing—no. She is like a lump of clay, ripe for sculpting—no. She is like a dagger, which he might sharpen—no.

She is a witch. She came into the earth pure and Dark. Her thoughts are tethered to her name. Unlike him, split in identity, forced to splinter for his destiny, searching for a name, she is all herself.

She is Bellatrix Black.

And, unsettled, for the first time in some time, unaware of why he feels how he does, Lord Voldemort accepts.

With a laugh to himself, Voldemort thinks that he has proven he is still capable of charming.

His next gesture proves that he is still capable of surprising himself.

* * *

“Rise,” he says. His marble hand, briefly, impresses on her own. He helps her to her feet like a gallant gentleman.

She rises.

Bellatrix is aware that a transaction has occurred. What has transacted? Her sanity? Her soul? Her life?

Then why does she feel more _herself_ than she ever has? The Lord has vanished her doubts. He is the impetus for her own ascension into becoming. Bellatrix feels the unfolding like a sigh. How lovely, to know that she is chosen. How lovely, to know that she has greatness to look forward to.

“When you come of age,” he whispers, “I will teach you.”

Bellatrix cannot stop herself: “Why not now?”

A gentle chuckle rewards her. “You are strong for one so young, but you are young nonetheless.”

Bellatrix tiptoes on the knife-edge. “I will surprise you.”

He pauses, his head tilting ever-so-slightly. “You say you are ready now?”

She nods.

“It is not easy, I warn you. The Dark is dangerous, Bella.”

At the use of her pet name, Bellatrix swings her head up and down. “Were it easy, I would not wish it so.”

She can tell she has answered correctly. Bellatrix fancies she might have impressed him, and a smile rises to her face.

“When can we begin?” she asks.

For a moment, she really thinks he will tell her (as she wishes) _now_ , and they will somehow begin lessons in this very hallway. She has forgotten everything beyond it anyway, all the irrelevant baggage of life. She is ready to consign all else away, everything but the tenuous space between her and the Dark Lord, and the way she sees herself (Dark, great, impressive) whenever he speaks.

He answers, “I will come for you. You will be my secret, Bella. None shall know.”

“None shall know,” she echoes. That is just as it should be. She will not need to explain to the simple children around her, concern herself with the reactions of her sisters, fear the interference of her teachers.

She will be able to descend into purity. She might _inherit_ herself.

“I have some business,” says her Lord, with a smile that does not reach his eyes, “that I must attend to. You must retire, Bella.”

Bellatrix feels the ending of their meeting like a splintering. But it is a promise, too. How could it truly be an end when she feels, in her, the beginnings of a new life?

“I will tell no one.”

He looks reassured. In his dark eyes, she fancies she catches a dim fire—a sliver of red.

She should leave, she thinks. Now, she feels the gentle stirring of awkwardness. Desire claws from her chest, clamoring that she should throw herself at him. Sanity responds, reasoning she should walk away so she might still preserve some dignity.

Bellatrix turns to go. She is hungry for the sight of him, already. She could look at him for hours and still not understand that otherworldly face.

Before she must slink down the hall, away, she is stopped.

Cold connects with her cheek. Slowly, Bellatrix pivots. His spindle-like finger caresses her face.

Her Lord bestows his touch.

For fear of breaking the moment, she is a still as a fox among hunters.

His hand withdraws with no discernible change in his demeanor.

“Goodnight,” she says, “my Lord.” She is as clumsy as a new lover.

“Good night, Bella,” he replies, and looks away.

Bellatrix knows herself to be dismissed.

She leaves, feeling the satisfaction of his eyes upon her back. She will not sleep this night.

The darkness of the castle is as a friend. She is invincibly Dark herself. Bellatrix the child has died, she thinks, a grin overpowering her, passion coursing through her being. Bellatrix, the warrior, is born.

* * *

Lord Voldemort notes her disappearance down the stair, black hair melding into shadow. Her fantasies gallivant away with her.

Lord Voldemort withdraws, completely, from her mind, not before catching sight of himself, as she sees him: divine, benefactor…arousing.

He clasps his wand. His fingers feel the dependable wood. It is different than the feel of the girl’s skin.

He tells himself he meant touching her to be a final strike to solidify her devotion. He thinks of the familiarity of the gesture, the power-move, boundaries crossed, liberties only superiors can take and…perhaps he debased himself, too. It was not intended thus, but there was something overly equalizing about the gesture, something intimate. He revealed himself, maybe, through tentativeness. _Fumbling_. 

He is not sure what prompted him to it.

For lack of a reason more logical, Lord Voldemort was coaxed by her enthrall.

He cannot believe that she absorbed the touch, not as a threat, but as _ambrosia_.

Regardless.

It is best to put the lingering out of his head. He rests the dreams of how he will begin instructing her. There is time in the future, and there is still work to be done.

He plies open the entrance to the Unknowable Room, its clutter unfamiliar after all these years. It is time to store his soul.

As he plants the diadem where it will never be found, Lord Voldemort considers the success of the night.

The headmaster has been thoroughly humiliated, more than he will even realize for some time to come.

A curse is laid; a Horcrux hidden.

And, a student will be taught. Bellatrix Black. Better than a thousand mindless sycophants.

Why, Lord Voldemort thinks with a smile, strolling away from the unknowing castle, he has left this night a Dark Arts teacher after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This timeline is actually possible! https://www.hp-lexicon.org/timeline/character-timelines/voldemort-timeline/ for more information.
> 
> I realized this meeting could have been possible, and the idea was fun to write out! I meant this piece to be shorter, but it went longer than intended; Voldemort is verbose. Also, I can't stop writing pseudo-Bellamort even though the year is almost 2020, but hey! It's fun to think about their strange dynamic and acknowledge the manipulation, but see if it is at all possible to empower Bellatrix beyond servant/sycophant. (I want to believe female villains can be flawed and scary and a little empowered all at once.) Thanks for reading :)


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